Tag: Sentential Links

Here we go again. Failure to click these links will be noted on your PERMANENT RECORD.

:: Thank God Hell’s Kitchen returned last night. Two weeks with nary an expletive use of the word “DONKEY!” and I nearly passed out from the shakes. I’m addicted, I tell you. I’m addicted! (Me too, I gotta admit. I wouldn’t mind getting a DVD of this show sometime, so I could hear Ramsay’s unbleeped kitchen bellowings. Personally, I think “You f***ing DONKEY!” should be the next phrase to sweep the nation.)

:: Poor Warren Spahn. It’s like you’re in a best-looking dude contest and you find out George Clooney is entered. (Yeah, I hate when that happens!)

:: And so I end my reign of being the last human being on Earth who hasn’t seen Jaws. (My God! That’s like not having seen Star Wars.)

:: We were trying to think of much better ways to determine the winner of Miss Universe:

-Make them answer geography questions.
-Make them play Risk.
-Make them fight each other with the traditional weapons of their country.

:: Ok, this whole blog thing is getting too inbred. Arrive at blog A. Follow link to B. Follow link to C. Then follow a link and find yourself back at A. Too many closed circles. I’m as guilty as anyone of perpetuating this. (Fair enough:)

:: I am a geek. I have rehearsed world domination monologues while shaving my legs. I have finely tuned plans for what I will do if I fall into a vat of radioactive waste and emerge with superstrength. And I am just as entitled to my self-indulgent adolescent power fantasies as any male comic book nerd.

:: Here’s McCarty Glacier in Alaska, as photographed by Ulysses Sherman Grant in 1909 (black-and-white) and by Bruce F. Molnia in 2004 (color): (Wow.)

:: Going to college is pretty much like going to kindergarten, but with less structure and discipline.

And finally:

:: My friends, of course, the ones I’ve made and the ones I’ve kept over these years, are my biggest accomplishment. (A happy belated birthday to the Indestructible Mr. Jones, whom I have known longer than anyone currently in my life save my immediate family.)

Onward and upward….

Share This Post

Well, here we go again. As a bit of insurance against the computer locking up on me while I’m writing this post, I’m composing it not on Blogger but on Writely, which automatically saves the document once every minute or so, so even if I do lock up, I’ll be able to get back the post minus whatever I’d written in the last minute once I’ve completed the cold boot. Not that my problem was Blogger-related, by the way. Blogger was an innocent bystander in last week’s meltdown.

(Writely, by the way, rules. I’m toying with the idea of not even having a word processor on my next computer and just using Writely — but I know I’ll chicken out. The next computer, though, will not have Microsoft Office anywhere near it. It’ll be Open Office all the way!)

And to folks who were about to be linked in last week’s post before disaster strike, I apologize. Even though you have no way of knowing who you were, there’s still that Karma thing. Anyhow, here are this week’s links. Click through, for these folks deserve it!

:: Folks were raving about the pork loin, but being my own toughest critic I thought it was a tad dry. For those interested, here’s how it was done. (Go get this recipe, folks. The pork loin was amazing. And Scott, if that was a tad dry, I’d hate to see what you call ‘juicy’! You’d need to have a half-inch deep pool of meat juice remaining after the last bite! And you know, food blogs aren’t unheard of — and as for the concern you voiced on Saturday about your cooking knowledge being cribbed from elsewhere, so what? As Sam Seaborn once said on The West Wing: “Good writers borrow from other good writers. Great writers steal from them outright.”)

:: Have you ever noticed that no matter what age we are, we’re always the perfect age? (I get Lynn’s meaning, but I’m a tad neurotic, so I tend to think that no matter what age I am, I’m still five years away from no longer being completely full of hot gas.)

:: New points on crayons, unblemished pads, fragrant pencil blossoms — these remind me of teachers I loved and those who loved me back.

:: Look: Fight Club was okay. It was just okay. But some people — especially some of you freaky internet people — worship this film. Worship it. Like, you think if you can quote enough lines, you’ll actually get to join Brad Pitt’s anarchy gang or something. Well, I’m here to tell you: you can’t. Get over it. (I don’t hate Fight Club, but I admit that I’ve never understood the fuss over it. It just wasn’t my cup of tea. And I think I should get credit for personal growth in linking a post that openly disses my beloved Star Wars: it’s the best f***ing movie ever, dammit! This is a really fun-looking blog, by the way — he has a feature called “the weekly object of his affection”, who this week happens to be my most recent ROWR! Designate.)

:: In short, I’m enjoying a bunch of books I had no intention of reading. (Isn’t that the way of it! How often do I have three or four books going at once, none of which is on my “Read Soon” list.)

:: Unfortunately, more and more people are walking around with Ipods and handless cell phones strapped to their heads, missing opportunities to relate with fellow humans and looking like so many Borg.

:: Baseball is a game of yards in which all the important measurements are done with centimeters.

:: And then, finally, there will be peace — the peace of a graveyard.

:: If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all these years of writing professionally, it’s that you need to go with the flow. I’d be a fool to ignore a story that was writing itself.

:: The thing is, Jim, I believe the great unraveling is not happening from the top down, but from the bottom up. I see a great unraveling taking place in the bottom right now. Most people just don’t want to look down. They are too busy whistling in the dark. (Well, I can’t end on a bummer note like that…)

:: For the rest of the story, where do I begin? In the gutter, of course.

Share This Post

ARRGGGHHHH!!!

I had this week’s Sentential Links post almost done — and then my f***ing computer locked up, forcing me to cold boot the machine and scuttle the post in the process. Damnation and hellfire! Consternation and uproar!

So, I’m just going to provide one of the links that I had and call it a night.

:: So I feel that I am starting over, in ways I desperately don’t want to. The people (the ones I cared most about) for whom my husband was a living, breathing, joking, loving entity are all gone away. (Anyone who thinks that blogs are an inferior medium for expression need to read this blog.)

Well, that’s it. I don’t feel like digging out the links I was going to present all over again, so maybe I’ll do a “special edition” Sentential Links later in the week. But maybe not. You never know.

(OK, a side point: on a message board I look in on now and then, there’s a fellow who seems quite proud of the fact that he reads e-books exclusively now. All I can say to that is that in the history of the human species, no paper book has ever crashed and had to be cold-booted, causing the text to completely disappear. Until the e-book can boast a similar level of dependability, I shall think of it as a lesser medium than paper.)

Share This Post

Heading into the holiday:

:: Whod’a thunk I would be so in love with a movie about a KILLER SHARK! (How do you get to live in America to the year 2006 without seeing the movie in question? Oh the Humanity!)

:: I am thinking about getting a tattoo or several to remind me about gratitude. I seem to forget about this way too much. It is the best gift we can give one another.

:: If you don’t buy this novel, I’ll kill myself. I mean it. I have Tylenol and wine, and I’m not afraid to mix them.

:: POW! Office Morale Booster!

:: People talking on cell phones can be annoying but sometimes I get the feeling that some people just want to ban cell phones in enough places so that they never have to see anyone talking on a cell phone. (It’s not the cell phone that bugs me, it’s the implied behavior by incessant users of them that the cell phone is more important than the people who are around them. With very few exceptions — and business-related “emergencies” do not qualify, unless they involve buildings on fire — I don’t believe there are conversations that are so important that they must be indulged wherever one is, simply because the existence of the cell phone makes it possible.)

:: Alfalfa has the property of promoting growth and well-being in some creatures while disagreeing with others. No one knows why. Cows love it. (Alfalfa sprouts! I love those on a sandwich, and I haven’t had them in, oh, forever or so. Now I gotta get some. It’ll be a nice change from my much-loved romaine and red-leaf lettuces.)

:: What possible defense is there for this behavior, and what rational person would consider Malkin, Hinderaker, Horowitz, Red State — all of them — even the slightest bit credible in the future?

:: John Hinderaker has responded to my post on how Hinderaker claimed that ticket sales for Al Gore’s movie had gone down when they’d actually gone up. (And surprise of surprises, it turns out that Hinderaker is an idiot. Imagine my shock.)

:: John Hinderaker sure could use a history lesson. (Wow. If being full of crap was a hockey game, Hinderaker would have the hat trick.)

:: Lady Liberty, Goddess of America: long may you lift your lamp against the darkness.

:: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

:: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

:: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

:: James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams: We’ve long resisted asking you for guidance. Perhaps we have feared in doing so we might acknowledge that our individuality which we so, so revere is not entirely our own. Perhaps we’ve feared an appeal to you might be taken for weakness. But, we’ve come to understand, finally, that this is not so. We understand now, we’ve been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were.

We desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, our-selves. Give us the courage to do what is right. And if it means civil war, then let it come. And when it does, may it be, finally, the last battle of the American Revolution.

:: Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

:: We cannot improve on the system of government handed down to us by the founders of the Republic. There is no way to improve upon that. But what we can do is to find new ways to implement that system and realize our destiny.

:: So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.

:: With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

Happy Birthday, America. Better days you’ve seen, but better days you will see again.

Share This Post

At last, it’s that time again for a short hop around Blogistan, or at least my little sector of it.

:: The more naive members of the environmental sector have been suckered into this line of thinking, too — especially the college kids, who imagine we can just divert x-amount of acreage from Cheez Doodle production and re-direct it to crops devoted to making liquid fuels for Honda Elements. They need to get some alt.brains.

:: The media is guilty of publishing stories which might harm the political interests of the President, not which could harm the national security of the United States. But Bush supporters recognize no such distinction. Harming the “Commander-in-Chief in a time of war” is, to them, synonymous with treason. Hence, we have calls for the imprisonment of our national media for reporting stories which tell terrorists nothing of significance which they did not already know, but which instead, merely provoke long-overdue democratic debates about whether we want to be a country in which we place blind trust in the administration to act in total secrecy.

:: No one has challenged these stories or other similar ones on any major point of fact; to the contrary, the reporting is widely viewed as being entirely correct on the main issues, and further revelations have confirmed their accuracy. So the crime — and remember that Barone and others are speaking of crimes here — is that the press is reporting stories contrary to the administration’s wishes.

:: This ought to finally convince the liberals and the MSM of the dire threat that Saddam presented in the fall of 2002. (I’m convinced!)

:: Let’s clear this up once and for all: cowboys are gay. Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay. Hobbits, on the other hand, just like going on extended backpacking holidays with their live-in male gardeners, during which they exchange soulful and significant glances and cry and hug and say “oh, Sam!” in a way which, if they were cowboys, would be totally gay, but, seeing as they are hobbits, just totally isn’t. Then the gardener marries the girl from scene 2 who didn’t get any lines, and then Frodo, the confirmed bachelor, goes on a permanent boating holiday with a bunch of “elves”. Dead butch behavior if you ask me.

:: Talking on a cell phone while driving is like mixing Valium and Jack Daniels – not a good idea. (I don’t even own a cell phone, and I’ve already decided that text messaging was invented by the f***ing Devil. Seriously, folks — nothing is so important that you have to sit there typing on this tiny-assed keyboard to someone else to say it, and it’s certainly not important enough to do while walking in public.)

:: On reading the WEST WING Scriptbooks, you come to realise that the legends about Aaron Sorkin are true. Specifically, the one about directors having to lean on the actors to speak faster. (I was crushed the other day to discover that for some reason, the interactive tour of the West Wing White House set on the Season Two DVD doesn’t work on my player. Dammit!)

:: What is with JKR? Does she get so lonely writing away in her study that she feels the need to pop out on occasion wailing “Death, Death!” (Well, it’s kind of like what the big comic book companies used to do — whenever there’d be a Big Massive Storyline in the offing, they’d preface it by assuring us of the forthcoming tale’s gravitas by promising that characters would die. It got to the point where the most effective deaths in comics weren’t presaged at all, like when Detective Jean DeWolff was bumped off in Spiderman.)

:: Every day is like a kid’s drawing, offered to you with a strange mixture of ceremoniousness and offhand disregard, yours for the keeping. Some of them are rich and complicated, others inscrutable, others barely more than a stray gray mark on a ragged page. Some of them you manage to hang on to, though your reasons for doing so often seem hard to fathom. But most of them you just ball up and throw away.

All for this week.

Share This Post

[Annoying passive voice]

The drill is known by you:

[/Annoying passive voice]

:: Maybe we are approaching…something. But I can’t see how we’re going to get there. All I see ahead is conflict – some violent but mostly just loud, stressful, annoying conflict. On and on…forever.

:: Thinking about her tonight, it occured to me that Diane Chambers, wherever she is, working on the 15th draft of her unpublishable novel, must have a blog by now. She has the perfect temperament for a blogger. She’s a know-it-all, an intellectual show off, opinionated, judgmental, endlessly self-referential, and a wee bit, um, self-absorbed? (Odd. I have a blog, and I’m none of those things. [blinks] What?)

:: In gaining what I most deeply needed, I have lost so very much.

:: Simple words, a demanding life.

:: The thrill of being on the brink of discovery is second only to being madly in love.

OK, now comes the distasteful part. The following Sentential Links all deal, in some way, with the odious and vile Ann Coulter.

:: Now look: I’ve been telling you all about how you, with negligible effort, can find buckets of evidence for evolution. I haven’t actually recited any of that evidence yet, and that’s because I and many other biologists have been telling everyone about that evidence for years: there comes a point where you have to recognize that the other side has simply put their hands over their ears and are shouting “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA” at the top of their lungs.

:: Millions of people buy and read Ann Coulter’s books and the national media repeatedly give her a platform. They represent the views of millions of Bush followers. To believe that they will just quietly fade away if they are ignored is pure wishful thinking, dangerous fantasy.

:: Coulter to “liberal”: You should be killed, traitor.
“Liberal”: F_ck you.
Malkin: See? The luny left moonbats are unhinged. (Same blog as the preceding, but a different author.)

:: The Right’s best counter to the obvious and indisputable evidence that the conservative movement is rife with unhinged, hatemongering lunatics is to reinforce the fallacy that both sides are just as bad. This is patently false. And we need to start calling it for the bullshit it is every single time we hear it.

:: This self-obsessed woman seems genuinely unaware that there was a flesh-and-blood human toll taken on 9/11, people to whom it really happened, and vicarious watchers like Ann Coulter, whose experience of it came from watching it on TV, act as if it happened to them too.

There is no person in American public life whom I loathe more than Ann Coulter. Not one.

Oh well. More next week.

Share This Post

[Jack Bauer]

Click the link, dammit! We’re running out of time!

[/Jack Bauer]

:: Focusing on ethnic cleansing of/by Indian tribes or the sad manipulation of Indian tribes in our quest for manifest destiny is neither a presuasive nor logical argument as to why the Senecas have a right to slot machines.

:: But there are other lessons. And today’s lesson was that some grown-ups are not good sports.

:: I swear, I don’t think there’s any other place in the world where a work crew going around filling small potholes with asphalt consists of twelve men in four trucks. (I haven’t seen it that bad here, I must admit — although we’ve got our own little road crew niceties. For instance: suppose some work is being done on a single bridge on an Interstate highway. One bridge only. We’re talking maybe a couple hundred feet worth of roadwork. An area of about two miles on either side of the bridge will be designated a “work area”, which means that the speeding tickets incurred therein are an even nicer chunk of change for the state.)

(Note to self: play with the Road Sign Generator mentioned in the above link sometime.)

:: Why is no one asking the right wingers the hard questions, like “Why do you want to damage my family?” Shove that at Bill Frist, loudly and publicly and often. I’d love to hear his answer.

:: What happens, as near as I can tell, is that through some combination of intentional partisan framing by political operatives and the press corps’ pre-existing feelings toward a candidate, a narrative is born. (And many are still succumbing to that narrative, aren’t they? The overwhelming reaction I hear from people regarding the prospect of Al Gore running in 2008 is, “Oh, God, not him again!”, as if we’d be seeing the second coming of Michael Dukakis, as opposed to a guy who, in his last candidacy, was such a horrible candidate that he merely inspired more people to vote for him than the other guy and only lost through the combination of some shenanigans and our stupid-assed Electoral College system.)

:: This is one of the reasons why I’m optimistic about classical music — it is doing much better on the Internet than in the record shops and in the concert halls.

:: I’ve never been a quiet person when experiencing joy or any other emotion. In fact you could truly say restraint and humility have never been my strong suits. When something wonderful happens either to me or for me, my YES! rings from the rafters [and my beloved is wreathed in smiles].

:: That is one of the wierd things about doing business. The mechanics of doing it well are interchangeable regardless of the product. You can be selling crack cocaine, or drawing pins, you still have to look after your customers and make sure you run a tight and efficient operation.

:: I think this is a winning theme for the 2006 midterm elections.

:: F*** the World Cup. (Hallelujah!)

Time to close it up. Tune back in next week for more.

Share This Post

It’s that time again! Click for context. Click, or the kitten gets it.

:: At this point, asking ‘what graphic novels should I read?’ has become a question equivalent to ‘what movies should I watch?’. There is no general answer to the latter question, not only because there is simply too much good stuff out there, but also because it depends on your taste. Where do you start with movies? 8 ½, Citizen Kane or Casablanca? Or with the latest blockbusters, the latest Oscar winners, the latest art films? Depends who you are and what you want. (Terrific post. I only wish that graphic novels weren’t so damned expensive. If I buy the entire Sandman saga, all ten volumes of it, at full cover price, I will have dropped somewhere around $150. I’m constantly seeing graphic novels I’d like to read, but I find price tags like $29.95 hard to swallow. The pricing structure of graphic novels tends to put a real damper on relying on serendipity to explore the medium, and I’m a reader who loves to rely on serendipity to go from one book to the next. There’s always the library, of course, but the library doesn’t have all the graphic novels I’d like to read.

This is an Upstate NY blog, by the way — its writer dwells in Ithaca.)

:: They are going to hell, of course, but only because they smell like pee.

:: It looks like Harry Reid has begun ending his e-mails with the Democrats’ dreaded 2006 catchphrase: “Together, America can do better.” (God, what the hell kind of slogan is that?! It makes me think of Jean Hagen’s immortal line from Singin’ in the Rain: “Why, I make more money than…than…than Calvin Coolidge! PUT TOGETHER!!” Personally, I’d go with something like this: “Vote Democratic in ’06. Because we gotta clean this shit up sooner or later.”)

:: Apparently working from the curious assumption that coffee should be a refreshing jangle rather than a muddy, hostile punch in the mouth, Nescafe recently started selling Sparkling Cafe: coffee plus carbonation. Generations of European philosophers are jittering in their graves. (Just found this blog. Can’t remember where.)

:: I’m finally learning what every 12-year old farm kid from Mississippi knows. (No idea how this blog got into my bookmarks — I blame the Dutch — but I like it.)

:: My purpose here is to point out that June 6, 2006 is an arbitrary date in a numbering system created by man that has been fiddled and fudged with over and over again across the course of centuries. (Yup. And the arbitrary nature of our calendar is why I always got irritated with people who would sagely pronounce that “The Millennium began on January 1, 2001 because there was no year Zero!” I’m thinking, “OK, let’s just say that there was a year zero. Bam, now there was a year zero. Who cares! We made the whole thing up!”)

:: An African-American and a Colombian serenading a Taiwanese woman with a forty-year old song by four guys from England, in a suburb of the Nation’s Capital on Memorial Day/Black Gay Pride Weekend: Welcome to The United States of America, 2006. (That is just great.)

:: There are a few reasons why Hooters hits a sore spot with women.

:: I drove to Michaels the next day and I’ll be damned if the whole store wasn’t full of supplies for home crafts projects. I had no idea. (Michael’s rules. It’s like Lowe’s, only with crafts and stuff.)

:: Don’t spend your time on the bus to basic reading Sun Tzu. (A lot of people have been screwed up by reading Sun Tzu….)

All for this week. Return next week for more. Or the kitten gets it.

Share This Post

Click ’em while they’re hot, folks:

:: What I really want to say is director Brett Ratner is a club, and the X-Men are a baby seal. (I love it when Mr. Jones dislikes a movie. And one of his sub-points about X3 — his view that it’s overstuffed with characters — is something that’s really got me concerned about the next Spiderman flick, which from what I’ve read will include just about every character who ever appeared in an issue of Spiderman, possibly minus Jean DeWolff.)

:: There was a time when you couldn’t throw a brick in Concord without hitting someone carrying a fresh letter of acceptance from the Atlantic Monthly in their pocket. (I had a hard time picking between two particularly good posts of Mr. Mannion’s this week.)

:: Then there’s the sound of a father shaking out a blanket to spread over the boy and then the noises of a computer ordered to boot itself to the ready and now just the sound of typing. (The hell with it. It’s my blog, so here’s the other of Mr. Mannion’s posts.)

:: To those who object to the use of da Vinci since it’s a prepositional phrase, I have an example for you to consider that might convince you to soften your position. Ready? (I do love a good “Why didn’t I think of that!” moment.)

:: The problem is, these yahoos have managed an ugly trick. They have turned criticism of the policies of Bastards in Suits into criticism of The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. This, of course, is completely wrong, as one can easily tell the difference between the Bastards in Suits and The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. One group is in Suits, and Not Getting Shot At, while another is in Uniform, and Getting Shot At. Please, try to grasp this. Not the same. (via TBogg)

:: And excuse me if this puts you off, Mr. Web 2.0 writer, but could we maybe retire the phrase “former Star Trek actor?” (Geez, that former Stand By Me actor is pretty touchy, isn’t he?)

:: Worse, Ringo has a taste for sex games and fantasies of a sort I really dislike, and after showing a certain amount of restraint in the previous book he lets himself go again here. (Happens every time I get tempted to try a John Ringo book, someone brings this up….)

:: The rain has begun. Out to the deck and the hot tub, to be immersed from all directions. (Ahhh, hot-tubbin’ in the rain. But you know what’s better? Hot-tubbin’ in the snow.)

That’s it for now. Join us next week and stuff.

Share This Post

Woo-hoo! Halfway to the century-mark for Sentential Links! Here we go:

:: The phone doesn’t ring in our house. Sure, folks call us. But the phone doesn’t ring. Ayup. Seven or so years ago, I turned off the ringer, and I haven’t looked back. (Amen, sister! We use an online answering machine thingie, and just leave the computer’s dial-up connection on all the time. I never answer the phone unless I note that they’re someone I really want to talk to at that moment. I’ve never understood the “Answer every call” thing that some folks have, as if life has to be placed on hold at the very second someone decides to call us.)

:: For the very first time, a photographer has managed to
capture on film the bubble in which President Bush lives. (This gentleman does nothing but write snarky captions to photos. If you’re on the political left, they’re often funny. He e-mailed me the link to his blog some time back, and I, ever the model of politeness, proceded to lose the link. Oops….)

:: What is the root word in the word “antidisestablishmentarianism”? (On a whim, I plugged “antidisestablishmentarianism”, that wonderful word which for some reason exists only to excite us with its sheer length, into Google’s Blog Search and this is the first post I found that was interesting in a way other than “Heh heh, that’s a long friggin’ word!” way. Looks like an interesting blog, but man, is that color combo hard on the eyes.)

:: Now I’ve got one more bottle to go and I’m scared. What if I actually start to like the stuff? (From the “Everything can be turned into a Simpsons Reference” file, I’m reminded of when Homer crossbred tobacco and tomatoes, coming up with “tomaccos” that were addictive and tasted like shit.)

:: My life has always been a little left-of-center. (Tell me about it….oh, and check out Incurable‘s new permalinks and URL!)

:: Jennifer Love Hewitt shows off her new hairstyle; it’s called the ‘is this a wig? No, it’s the suburban mom/i have a ginormous head’ cut.

:: And if she was the one to endure both the gestational and birthing phases of our two boys, it was left to me to ensure there would be no more than those two boys. So then, needs must there be some tamperin’ with my own boys.

:: A lot of people want classical concerts — both on stage and in the audience — to be livelier. (I think it’s the “museum” aspect of classical music performance: when touring an art gallery, one silently looks at a painting or sculpture and solemnly studies it, saying nothing or as little as possible. Ditto the classical concert. Emotional involvement isn’t to be shown. It’s a shame.)

:: Hold on a minute: They’re saying a whopping percentage of (at least technically literate) Brits now believe the pseudo-biblical “revelations” in “The Da Vinci Code” are true? I suppose it’s no wonder millions of people in the modern world claim they believe in the bible, “Intelligent Design” and astrology — even when they admit they know virtually nothing about them. In so many ways, we still live in the Dark Ages. Just let me say that if you are so credulous that a novel (fiction!) or Hollywood movie can upend your comprehension of one of the most dominant religious traditions in the world, then you are possessed of all the faith (and reason) you deserve.

:: It occurred to me this morning that I have spent the past year consuming one self-help or spiritual book after another in a frenzied, prolonged binge intended, I suppose, to induce enlightenment.

:: The suspenders on bib overalls over t-shirts on pretty girls can be cute and flirtatious. (Over nothing at all, they are Omigod.) (I just blogrolled PrairieMary in the last week or so, and here she is, uttering words truer than which have never been spoken!)

:: Is there a Louisiana-based novelist who is the equivalent of, say, Florida’s Carl Hiaasen? Let’s hope so, because the undoing of Democratic Representative William Jefferson – nailed by the Feds in a bribery investigation – has the soul of a Hiaasen book: petty greed, graft, official malfeasance, all dusted with unintended humor and a generous sprinkling of incompetence. This is the stuff of paperback fiction.

All for this week. Enjoy!

Share This Post